Self Portrait and Press

Self Portrait September 2009

September 26, 2009

19" x 26 1/2"

Oil on Canvas

$350.00 CAN

Photo: Drinking coffee and reading the paper

Photo: Newspaper picture and caption

I put the finishing touches on my Self Portrait yesterday. I have mentioned before, it has been quite some time since I really got back to figurative work. In my school days I did countless self portraits because I'm a cheap model. I have noticed a significant progression in my work since then and I believe the still life painting has really enhanced my skills. I highly recommend to any artist to take a year and do at least a still life a week, it will bring them back to the basics of just seeing. Being able to truly see something and to interpret it in a comprehensive manner that communicates effectively to others, is really the goal of all paintings weather they are representational or abstract. Doing a self portrait every year helps to gage the change and progression as an artist, not only do my looks change, but how I see things change. I see light in a new way. I also see color in a new way. Gray is never just gray. It is either a blue gray or a red gray, green gray, peach gray, warm, cool, etc. Next time you go into a room and the walls are painted see if you can tell what kind of colors can make that color up, if you had a pallet in front of you how would you mix that up? (Note to my students: and no using out of the tubes, or blacks)

Last Monday I had a great workshop that went very well. I was quite nervous about the workshop because I had never taught it before. It was on the basics of oil painting and painting in general. It was an information session about things you may want to know about painting and and the oil painting medium. I covered everything like paint make up, brushes, painting surfaces, solvents and ways you can avoid them, pallets, oils, color theory, etc. It was a lecture where I encourage sidetracking with questions, really that is why people come is because they have questions to ask. I think I may have to run it again either in the new year or next fall. If you are interested please contact me [email protected] .

The other pictures above were in the local paper of me painting last weekend during the Alberta Arts Days. Just to clarify, because they made me look like I wasn't a very good painter, they printed in the caption that I was painting my son, when in fact I am painting my daughter (hence the pink shirt and only a slight resemblance to my son in the right hand picture).

As for my daughter and her hand, I still haven't tackled the painting. Since last weekend she has had 3 casts, and she gets another one on Wednesday. She has been keeping us on our toes and strengthening our backs. She is quite snugly and needs extra love day and night! So there hasn't been too much work on anything this week. I was just glad to get a bit of time to finish my self portrait. I told my husband that was going down stairs to do some laundry. An hour later he came down looking for me and found me in my studio painting away. The good husband that he is, he said "That's looking really good. I'll make lunch".